Classic Album: Björk - Post

Classic Album: Björk - Post

Genre : Indie

Type: News

Author : Super Admin

Date : Wed, 09 Dec 2015

(Elektra) June marked the 20-year anniversary of Björk's most commercially successful, and critically acclaimed third album, Post. The Icelandic artist is akin to sushi. The consistency, flavors, colors, and other culinary details that makes sushi, well, sushi either attracts or detracts an individual's taste buds. In the case of Post, Björk offers a banquet of well-written lyrics, solid production, seductive strings experienced on "Isobel", a swirl of industrial trip hop of "Enjoy", and cinematic big band "It's Oh So Quiet" onto an album of varied flavors, passing like a banquet conveyor.

The wow factor that drove Post to its platinum, classic status is Björk's fearless approach to the good, bad, and the grotesque aspects of human emotion. This is an album that focuses on the current that builds from a past in which every human can relate to – but with a more flamboyant soundtrack. It is a short story with a breath of mystery, frustration, heartbreak, and other facets of the human emotion that again, makes it an album relatable to any person at various times in life. Even the inner workings of the album are a bit story time in that Björk recorded multiple tracks while standing in the ocean surrounding the Bahamas. The rugged nature of "Army of Me" in which DJ Graham Massey of 808 State added his production touches, serves as a raw intro to the sequence of events.

Watch the music video for "Army Of Me" from Björk

Each track summons an emotion from the listener parallel to reading a news column for the first time and not knowing just how you'll react to the story. In addition to the rambunctious synths of "Army of Me," you have the forceful call-to-action in the lyrics, "Stand up / You've got to manage / I won't sympathize anymore." Though brief (coming in at only 2 minutes, 29 seconds), "You've Been Flirting Again" mixes sorrowful strings with Björk's low, smooth croon "Give her some space / Give her some time." The most unintentionally sexy song of the album is "Enjoy" in which trip-hop vet Tricky lent his hand to the production process. There's a tangible, magnetic attraction between Björk and a significant other in which she allows herself to 'explore' and engage as she sings, "Wish I'd only look and didn't have to touch / I wish I'd only smell this and didn't have to taste." Not to go unmentioned is the angst and subsequent acceptance from Björk's powerful chords on "Possibly Maybe." She calmly (with a hint of gloat) sings, "Since we broke up I'm using lipstick again / I suck my tongue in remembrance of you." Meanwhile, "I Miss You" refers to falling in love and missing someone you haven't even met yet that's "so special."

Björk fits into no categorical genre, she offers a great measure of creative force that heeds no rule but crafted impulse, and it shines particularly well across her endeavors on Post. After listening to the album from start to finish your desire for something inimitable is quenched, and you're left echoing Björk's "My Headphones": "My headphones / they saved my life."